It was one thing for one SME idol group Super Junior to jack Lyle’s (two) choreo’s … now another idol group, SHINee (one I like) has done it…

This is interesting. My friend Sam from North Carolina (raise up, take your shirt off, spin it like a helicopter) brought it to my attention. This video is of a Korean boy band doing my disturbia choreography to the song “just dance” by Lady GaGa. This was probably taken from our WOD Pomona video. You can see the actual choreography from that video here (starts at 3min)

This whole thing kind of boggles my mind. How can the “choreographer” take pride in their work knowing it isn’t really theirs? I mean congrats you copied the choreography dead on, but that’s about all you really did. I bet it would have been easier to come up with simple yet affective two steps for these “talented” dancers than taking the time to learn my routine off of youtube anyway. If you like the choreography that much then why not do it to the song it was intended for? There was a lot of thought put into the movements that directly correlated to the actual song. Now the choreography means nothing at all. I mean sure it gets the job done but it’s just movement now. No meaning, no depth, no substance, just movement. From the looks of things they have a pretty big budget so why not just ask me to do something for the artist. I would be more than happy and being that i am not considered a big name i would have probably been cheaper than anyone else.

In the end there is little to no chance at all of me getting compensation let alone any credit for this. It just sucks that those who take the time, effort and hard work to create can go over looked by artist and labels. In the end we are small fish in their pond and as of now there is little we can do about it. Thank God for Movement Lifestyle…

So this whole ‘plagiarizing’ Bleach situation got me thinking about the whole Super Junior jacking Lyle’s choreographies. In essence the situations are very similar.

If you’re wondering what I’m talking about and you haven’t heard, Nick Simmons, son of Gene Simmons is under scrutiny by the manga fans as well as his own publishers.

Nick set out to release his new “manga” called Incarnate.

It was brought to Kubo Tite’s attention yesterday when he received message overload on his twitter stating that someone in the U.S. is copying his work of Bleach.

I’m not going to go into the whole debate about it. You can read and a very well written article about it by Deb Aoki.

For full comparison’s between the two you can see it at Bleachness@LJ.

Now for my comparison to the SuJu situation before. Honestly, I’m only writing about it because the two situations are very very similar.

If I was mangaka and people were making fan-art of my work, that’s a huge compliment. It means that my story, my art work is liked/loved by many people. Enough so, that people want to re-produce it in their own eyes. But, if someone blantly took my work, like straight copied it, got it produced in mass production and sold as ‘original’ I’d be mad.

Realize Japan is on a whole different level when it comes what is entertainment and what sells/works. What works in that country won’t work here. It’s been tried and failed.

This is like the Super Junior ‘copying’ 2 of Lyle Beniga’s choreographies. After reading about this situation, one can actually say they plagiarized his work.

How? The difference of people learning a choreography and posting it on YouTube and having an actual Idol group perform it on national television (and in a dance battle that they ended up winning) is pretty big. There is no fine line in that sense.

The situations are very similar in this case. Fan-art is copied but at the same time has the artists’ own style (or flare) to it. They aren’t getting paid huge amounts of money. Yes they are attempting to sell it, but like most of what twitterverse has been saying, they don’t make that much money and sometimes end up in the red.

What Nick did was not only copy the original work, but claimed it as his own. He is a ‘celebrity’ and is/was going to make profit. It’s the same thing with SuJu. While they didn’t say it was their original choreography, they didn’t give proper credit to it’s original creator.

Both situations have a celebrities who ‘traced’/’copied’ another’s work. It wasn’t just the story line, it was character design and drawing style as well. Both situations included people who in their own genre’s are famous, but not as famous or paid as ‘well known’ as the celebrities. (Although Nick is living off his dad’s name.)

There’s a fine line between fan-art and plagiarizing.

What do you all think?

There’s also a facebook group that has a list of other manga’s Nick is accused of plagiarizing.

A couple of days ago the situation of Super Junior taking choreographer Lyle Beniga‘s “mic check” and “nike boots” choreography was brought to light. Many fans were upset that people like us were saying that they jacked his choreo and were upset at it.

While our opinion doesn’t matter and the only opinion that does matter is Lyle’s, he tweeted a short answer to answer the question about SuJu copying his choreo.

Don’t mind the thing above it… he tweeted this yesterday.

“it doesnt matter if suju claimed dat my choreo was theirs or not, they still used it w/o permish, profitted frm bein on the show & they won! … which is wrong. don’t forget that these are our careers people! ~a quick answer to a repeating question.”

While I’m not sure if he meant to say “it doesn’t” or “it does,” that’s his answer.

By the way, we still think you need to get paid for those two that they took. You earned it!

So it wasn’t just that one choreography that Super Junior took, earlier in 2009, Eunhyuk of Super Junior used Lyle Beniga‘s “Nike Boots” choreo on another show.

Original

Eunhyuk

While the fans of SuJu are saying it’s not a big deal, but this is twice now they’ve taken a choreography that isn’t their’s and performed it on national television. That is a big deal to the dance community, it’s disrespectful. Yes everyone always copies someone, that’s a given, but not everyone belongs to a famous group or to a global agency. I didn’t like SuJu before, just because I don’t like their music, but I have lost mad respect for them.

Lyle needs to get paid! That and maybe SM needs to hire him, oh wait they won’t because he choreo’s for the better group.

Just like the title says.. SuJu jacked Lyle Beniga’s “Mic Check” choreo.

0:25 mark

2:17 mark

If you’re gonna jack someone else shiz at least do it right. Not to mention the fact that it looks like they totally carbon copied Jabbawockeez. I mean masks are whatever, but the movements and what not are so jabba.

SuJu fans probably think it’s ok, but I don’t think it’s right for an artist to use someone else’s choreo unless they asked permission and/or it was made for them. This was something he did in the studio and while others probably learn it and put it on youtube, they’re not famous and are not on national television. Especially when the show is title “Star Dance Battle 2010” and it wasn’t made specifically for them.

I don’t know how old this is, but this has to be the funniest and the most awkward thing on earth for Super Junior members to see.

Watching a bunch of inmates dance to your song is either an insult or a compliment. I chose the latter. Those Cebu inmates do have a lot of time on their hands. Like SuJu said, they are repenting and the song is perfect for them; but are they really sorry sorry?